Unknown Speaker 31:20 All right, hello everyone. Thank you for joining us for this session, I'm going to go ahead and just remind you what the session is just in case. This is reviving stagnant exhibits, and with this session, Andrew Rowan will be addressing decades old exhibits at the Erickson Museum, how they expanded from a narrow focus of historical tools to using the history of the artist life, Eric Sloane, to question what it means to be an American, this organization's experience of changing traditional models of reinterpretation proves that this process can be accomplished with a small staff, and limited funding discussion for this session will focus on sharing ways to reframe narratives and to reveal formerly hidden stories to promote relevance at your site. And just a little bit about Andrew. Before we get started, Andrew is the curator and site administrator at the Eric stone museum out of Connecticut. Originally he is from West Virginia, where he received his bachelor's in social studies education from Sheppard University. Andrew came to Eric Sloan museum with a experience with experience working at public history sites like Harpers Ferry National Historical Park, South Mountain State battlefield for the from Maryland Park Service and Henriques Historical Park managing their 17th century Virginia tobacco farm in his spare time Andrew is an avid Archaea agriculturalists, in support of historical trades and may be found working aboard tall ships. He and his wife are thrilled to be living in New England, and a small timber frame farmhouse with their two pups and Andrew is honored to be a steward of when Connecticut's valuable cultural resources. And this is just a reminder to run take your questions at the end of the of this session, but please be very active in putting your questions in as we go throughout the presentation so when Andrew gets done, we can start answering all of your questions, and don't have to have any awkward period of waiting for questions at the end. With that, I'm gonna hand turn things over to Andrew so Andrew could turn your screen on unmute yourself and share your video. Unknown Speaker 33:34 All right. Thank you, Kyle. I will share my screen here. All right, good morning everyone and thank you for having me here at The Ohio local history Alliance conference, and I have been really working here at the Eric Sloan museum this, this past year and a half. I took over as curator admits a very interesting time in the museum's museums process, and development of the museum. So I'll be going over that today, and hopefully, this, this will mainly be geared towards small museums. But even if you're a larger institution, some of the smaller items, and actions that we've been doing in our Connecticut, museums, might still find relevance for you in larger institutions. So, without further ado, I'll go ahead and get started. So the Erickson Museum is located in Kent Connecticut, and it is a museum that was started in 1969 by artist and author. Eric slung the museum was founded with the idea of being a center to highlight. Early American craftsmanship and be a and be dedicated to early American craftsmanship. It is listed on the National Historic Landmarks are listed as a National Historic Landmark, not due to the museum itself but due to our 1826 iron furnace which operated from 1826 to 1896, but unfortunately has been largely forgotten from our narrative and the museum itself was closed from the fall of 2018, and due to renovations, and we weren't able to reopen until May of 2021. So a lot of this will be. We, I know we had a very unique circumstance. And we, this is a little bit about our process of making the best of it. We are run by the Connecticut Department of Economic and Community Development, and we are a within the State Historic Preservation offices division within that there are four museums and four different areas of the state that are operated by the state of Connecticut, again by our Historic Preservation Office, this nice little map of Connecticut here kind of gives you an idea of where we are, of course, Connecticut is a small state very small state, from our center in Hartford. We kind of radiate out the Eric Sloan Museum is in the northwest corner, it's the little heart right over along the New York border. With that being said all of our museums are with an hour and a half to two hour drive of each other, and the entire museum system is operated by six permanent staff who are employed year round. And then we also employ seasonal staff, five to seven seasonals between May and November. Because of the staffing situation, and because through a history of how the museums have been used in the past. Right now we are only open to the public from May until November 1, but we're looking to expand that. And within the these shot here we have in the top left corner we have old new gate prison and copper mine in the bottom left hand corner the Eric salon Museum, which I represent the top right hand corner we have the prudence Crandall museum. And then in the bottom right hand corner we have the Henry Whitfield Museum in Guilford Connecticut. Unknown Speaker 37:28 So to give you a little bit of background about your excellent some of you might be familiar with his work, but Sloane, was an American author, artist, Illustrator and collector. We often struggle with how we identify Sloane, the words we use to identify him because he makes ups, he, if there was something he could get into, he did, which is great for our purposes of interpretation, it leads us very kind of limitless of what we can talk about, but we try to stick to the central themes, he was a painter that painted primarily from the 1930s until his death in the 1980s during his lifetime he wrote over 30 books, wrote and illustrated over 38 books, and hundreds of articles on topics varying from meteorology American aviation and early Americana and folk ways. I have some samplings of those there, and then in the right hand bottom right hand corner we have Eric song himself, installing his own personal Americana collection into the museum in 1969, which will will play a part and to how our stories is a bit unique. Sloan, our exhibits were designed and originally curated by Eric Sloane himself. So, moving with the theme of the conference of overcoming challenges. I wanted to give you an idea, a little bit of what we were facing. When I started at the museum. So when I came into my interview, you know, you ask all the questions of, of a site that you're not, not that familiar with and try to get an idea of what you're getting yourself into. And what I heard from, from my boss was that we are dealing with limited space in the museum. It is essentially three large galleries, and one to two outdoor exhibits, with a lot of permanent installations, because Eric Sloane designed these exhibits, not just necessarily as historic exhibits for museums, He put them in with the idea that the tools and his early Americana collection were not just simply items they tell stories about history, but they were also works of art in themselves, so he often described the gallery as one large art installation. So the state of Connecticut views, the, the collection that he installed as one large artwork. So that means that we can have very little change to it. We also have, I was told that there was a very outdated narrative and experience visitor experience occurring so that was something that we wanted to overcome, and be because the museum had been closed for so long, there was very little public awareness of what was at that the museum was there when it was open, what it was offering, and it was one of those places that people drive by 1000 times but no one ever stops that I myself had tried two years in a row to visit when I was visiting New England, and it was always closed and had very obscure hours. It was not very kid friendly, and it has a very limited staff and budget. So, with those five or six permanent staff members that one of those includes our executive director of all four museums, she also runs all of Connecticut historic preservation and Connecticut arts. The four museums are run by a curator and site administrator who are also dealing with visitors on a daily basis, as well as upkeep of the site maintenance, paying the bills, the whole nine yards. And that to me that sounded like a challenge I wanted to kind of take on. And we also had a very limited budget, even though it is the state spreading money out over four institutions and very separate parts of the state with very separate missions, was, was a challenge. And this piece of artwork inside of our this this color mixing palette I think best represents what we were, we were kind of dealing with. Unknown Speaker 41:39 So, the Connecticut museum staff really had already started this process before I was hired on with this idea of reinterpreting reinterpretation. And the idea was we know we're a small museum that we're a group of small museums, we know we don't have the staff we know we don't have the budget, and we, we know we can't make excuses for that we need to jump in and still get the job done. So with that in mind. The staff was already working forward creating plans that were budget friendly, that we're not this all in one throw a bunch of money at this big blockbuster, kind of, kind of exhibit, hoping that it would draw people in, and then you're stuck with it for the next 10 years 15 years because you spent 1000s of dollars on it. We also wanted to look at it, our interpretation not being staff based currently at the Eric Sloan museum right now because I'm the only full time staff member there. My seasonal staff. Luckily for them, have moved on to full time jobs in the field, but that leaves me with one person to operate the museum. So, the other museums are in the same boat, Obviously people need time off, we mean, you know this or that. And our museums are seeing 1000s of visitors over the summer. So realizing that we need to get a lot done with a small amount of people and and just knowing that going in, is something that we are facing. And we wanted to build in a feedback loop with the idea that we're constantly interacting and hearing from our visitors and engaging with them, and not putting everything on the table at once we wanted to test things, see how they work. And if it doesn't work, go back to the drawing board, not just keep trucking ahead with something that might not work. So that's something that we keep in mind, and then the eye with that kind of same idea that it's constantly evolving, we will never have a point at the museums where we say, okay this is it we have reached where we are, it'll be a lot of temporary exhibits a lot of changing exhibits, and something that we're really going to keep working towards. And we want to look at it again just basic good interpretation having this holistic all encompassing approach to what we're doing at the museum. So making sure anything that we do feeds back into our main mission, and covers multiple aspects of the visitors experience, and the goals for the museum. So the museum itself I touched on this earlier was founded by Eric Sloane, and to highlight American craftsmanship in 1969, from 1969 until 1985. That's really how the museum was operated come in, look at old tools, and really think about this nostalgic time of the good old days the simpler times, and the country. And in 1986, after Sloan's passing his studio and his, his workspace were donated by his family to the museum and the museum decided to shift its focus away from just the tools and in the history, but to start looking at Eric Sloan's life, and his legacy as well. But what ended up really happening was that it became a shrine to Eric Sloane, the studio that you see on the left is thankfully I never, I never saw it in that condition. It was filled with not only original items from sling studio, but due to limited space, it was used as extra storage. The framed paintings you see are around, are actually original pieces of art that just due to lack of storage, were kind of put in this room, from the angle that the camera from the angle that the photo was taken. That's all the further visitors were ever able to go into this exhibit. So that kind of gives you an idea of what we're dealing with. There was not a lot of change for over 50 years and the museum. And when I started the, the, the mission which they knew they would need to change was keeping the legacy and memory of artists, author and collector Eric Sloane alive, which to me was just one of the lamest missions. And luckily we're working. We have a new working mission statement that that hopefully is a little bit better. Unknown Speaker 46:05 So, the renovation years. The museum closed in 2018 due to just massive neglect for the building, but it had seen its better days, there had been no structural improvements since 1969. And it was it was due for some upgrades. The problem, although we were very happy to have this done, was that it was only the structural repairs that people were seeing. So, root upgrades to the siding, the building structure itself. Updates to the electricity bathrooms very, you know, utilitarian style upgrades, not things that when visitors hear that this is a newly renovated Museum, they're going to come in, and I think they're expecting new exhibits new collections. This is not what it was, it was to make the building safe and usable again, and really bring it up to code. So nothing was done for the collection or the interpretation. Being a state, state run project, of course, you know there's a lot of hoops to jump through so that caused many delays in the project itself. It was supposed to reopen in 2019 that got pushed back to 2020, renovations, It was supposed to be the spring of 2020 Of course, due to COVID that slowed things down, and the renovations themselves were not actually completed until the fall of 2020. During this time the entire collection was removed from the museum. So this is about the point that I came in, I started right as the world was shutting down for COVID made the move from Virginia where I was living up to Connecticut and found myself in an empty museum. I had heard that there was nearly 3000 objects in the collection, but the only thing I knew is that they were all stored and large boxes and they were being shipped back to the museum, and it was my job to get them back together and make sense of the collection before we could do anything else. So, there were nearly 3000 known objects in the museum. That's not counting everything that was not a session, or we just we had no information for they were just objects that had been packed up. Again, we had the challenge of the limited space, and permanent exhibits, so we need to put everything back exactly how Eric Sloane had installed it in 1969 to keep the integrity of the installation itself. we needed to go through and properly a session the collection that was another obstacle that we faced we knew that we would never have an opportunity, like the one we were, we were facing, where we could be closed and take the time to really look at all of the items, and make make a record of them there was four different sessioning styles going on, and many duplicates there were triplicates there were just bad information. So we worked to get that done. And that took the summer of 2020, and we were still finishing the did the, the record keeping side. In the spring of 2021. The collection was back together. By the winter of 2020. There was just so much stuff. A lot of things. We decided not to put back together, which, which I'll talk about as well. for our public awareness, that was a huge issue that we're facing, we knew that we had a museum to reopen but we weren't sure who was going to come in how we were going to let people know that we were reopening. We had zero. I shouldn't say zero we had very little money for our budgeting, we managed to rely on free advertising to get the word out. We knew we wanted to market a new experience of the museum, and the best way that we found to do that was by simply creating social media pages for the museum itself. For us that really snowballed into leading into everything else we started it Unknown Speaker 50:07 really hitting the social media campaigns hard using using free resources, again because our budget was, was next to nothing, through social media we had various podcasts reach out to us to conduct interviews that have large followings. And of course, just the way the internet works that kind of helped kick things off, we reached out to local radio stations, and did did radio interviews we reached out to print media did all of the basic plain Jane advertising, and that really ended up working for us. We created a Google listing the museum had never had one and just letting people know simply when they would Google the museum, what, what our hours were where we were located and how to get ahold of us. As you can imagine was, was something that we desperately needed. And we really relied heavily on community connections and partnerships, some of the things that I still hear at the museum is, it was always close when I've tried to go, it's just that old tool place or it's a place I've driven by 1000 times and never stopped. So with that we also with the community engagement that was huge for us because we not only wanted to connect with our physical community, but we wanted to connect with other small institutions and similar interest groups to help spread the word that we were reopening, but also to let people know that we were there to be able to be helpful if we could be. So for our physical community, the biggest thing that we did was join our local Chamber of Commerce. we were able to join as a nonprofit organization which was great, and we really tapped into the local tourism. The town of Kent is a big fall and summer retreat to get out of New York City, it's only about an hour and a half out of the city itself. So people would head to the country and and Kent fills up on the weekend so just letting visitors know and tourists know that we were there, it was huge for us. We reached out to other small institutions, like the castle and Marietta, talked with Kyle and did some virtual programming, which helped spread the word that the museum was there and we did that with other institutions as well, and reaching out to interest groups such as early American trades organizations art organizations, other art museums, was really huge for us. And again, these might all seem like basic things, but I think sometimes we have to go back to the basics. When we're looking at remaking the picture. So we had a couple things that we wanted to keep in mind as we went forward. As far as evolving our interpretation so we knew there were things that we needed to do to give visitors and a new and better experience than than what they were getting in the past in the past visitors would come to the front desk, whoever was there would hand them a spiral bound. You know notebook that had various pictures and very small font, and it was a little guide book that was the idea was to hand it to visitors after they paid, and allow them to go through the entire exhibit self guided, other than the signage that was created by Erickson in 1969 there was no additional signage, our art collection was a mixture of original pieces as well as, as prints and reproductions, and there was no discerning which the walls were covered with anything and everything. The idea was if we haven't it needs to be on display, all or nothing. So we decided to look at it changing that and making some improvements where we could. We also looked at challenging older narratives. This museum was created by a man who looked at American, the American past as a, in a very nostalgic and overly romanticized way. So we wanted to confront the idea that the past is not this ultra super easy going, everyone had a great time everyone loved the work, overly nostalgic place, and, and with that, a lot of Sloan's writings talk about what it means to be an American. And we wanted to really tackle, tackle that as well because he brings up good points that I think we all can agree with, and then he brings up things that we, you know now have moved away from and realize that this is a constantly changing concept. Unknown Speaker 54:21 We also looked at using the current collection that we did have to provide new voices with that same collection. So looking at what we had and using it to our advantage. We also wanted to promote crafts trades and arts, getting back to that original mission of promoting craftsmanship and trades and and helping to go through that. And then we also wanted to look at really making the museum, more kid friendly and providing programming for all ages. The demographic for the museum in 2017 was mostly retirees who were only coming between May and August, September would kind of die away if people got back to school, there was only about, there was less than 100 kids that would come a year. So we wanted to really change that and show that we could be a museum that was for more than just retirees. This is our current working mission. It is the museum works to engage with history, arts, contemporary issues and conservation through the collection, or excuse me through the works collection and legacy of Eric Sloane. And this is simply our working mission, I don't know if we'll ever have this permanent, this, this, Britain and stone mission, as we know that things need to constantly evolve and change, and I'm very thankful that my director is of that same opinion to be able to just constantly change and adapt to what, how we can best serve our visitors and be most effective. As an institution ourselves. Unknown Speaker 56:06 So to tackle some of the exhibit changes we went from the height, changing the idea that from being a shrine to an exhibit and one way we were able to do that is in the slung studio itself again the studio was installed in the museum in 1986 after Eric slim died. And the idea was that it was supposed to look like his working studio at the time of his death. There was a lot of fanfare about it, the family came in helped arrange some of the items. But what we've what we found is that they didn't get it exactly right, this, this studio was, had ropes up actually had wooden walls, knee walls at one point that you just kind of looked in and looked at Eric slung stuff, there was no signage no interpretation, and you can only go so far. That was one of the first things we did, As we reinstalled the museum was arranged the studio in a way not only to hell it was. But looking at photographic evidence and interviews with Slome or people that had visited Sloan studio to make the space not only more accessible to visitors but more accurate to the space itself slung was well known for inviting people to come into his studio and he liked to play show and tell, he like to show them around. And that's the idea that we wanted to bring to this exhibit, like you were visiting the studio and you were learning more about the work, and collection that was that we could offer rather than it being a shrine to a guy that died in the 1980s. We opened it up and started allowing guided tours. We also made it accessible. Before it was a clutter of objects. So we made it so it would be ADA compliant as far as moving through the exhibit and through our tours. And as we were putting collection back, we found really unique items that really told a lot about Sloane's work that for years had been shoved away on the shelf. So for instance the middle of picture features a book called American barns and covered bridges, and as I was putting this back on the shelf, I realized that it was not a book at all, but it was actually a book box, he had taken the, the front and back boards off of the book, and use them to enclose all of his research for that book. And for us this this covered a lot of different aspects, and not only Sloane was not a professional historian, and he was not a professionally trained artists so he found himself moving and trying to move between those two worlds. So, we like to show that he even though he was an amateur historian. He was very well researched for his, his abilities, and then at the same time as an artist, not being a formally trained artist, all of the research that he would use. As far as his illustrative renderings of these barns of these covered bridges, so for four years, this has been shoved away on the shelf, and it's been a favorite for visitors and it's just one example of the items that we've pulled out to talk about the studio more again using the things that we have and not having to cost a fortune to change our exhibits, and the right hand side I apologize for for a double picture there, but that is the best picture I had of the art gallery. So we made the decision to only show original works in our gallery, and visitors have responded really well to that. And we're really working with the idea that less is more. We don't need to have everything we own on display for people to get the idea of what we're working with. We also again challenging older narratives, we wanted, we're just starting this process of really looking at what it means to be an American. So Sloane identiv called the collection symbols of American spirit and he thought that the tools in the early Americana collection identity are represented the resilience and the creativity and the ingenuity of early Americans, and we wanted to give people the opportunity to discuss what they thought were characteristics or symbols of what it means to be an American, or of America itself. So we started out with a simple chalk, or excuse me, a simple poster board with post it notes asking people, and it became so popular that we spent a little bit of money, I think we spent about $100 total and made a few chalkboards, got some chalkboard paint, and made some interactive chalk boards for around the exhibit, they have continued to be popular, and now that we know that this will continue to work, we're going to be continuing to move that forward with putting in more permanent exhibits as it goes. So again, taking steps building in that feedback and seeing how visitors are using the item before we jump in all the way Unknown Speaker 1:00:51 we again want to acknowledge that that the over romanticized past and show that the past isn't this this wonderful great easygoing place, and we want to be a center of civic engagement, a previous museum I'd worked at offered the site as a center for naturalization ceremonies to welcome new US citizens, which was a wonderful experience. My favorite event that we ever did there, and we did it yearly. So I would love to bring that to the Eric Sloan museum that is supposed to be this idea of what it is to be an American, and, and these early traditions of America. And we also want to be a center for for other civic engagement, providing the local community with areas to register to vote, provide discussions for upcoming elections, things like that, just making our, our museum, more accessible to the, to our community. We're also using the same collection, but providing new voices. So on the far right hand corner, we have an airfield map that Eric Sloane created in the 1930s, and within it just in one small section of the map, he goes through the map kind of listing all the Aviators to fly this airfield, and he has this section dedicated to women fliers and for Women's History Month, we wanted to move just beyond the tools and being known as this museum that old guys love to because they could come and just look at tools all day. We really wanted to look at what we could do beyond, Beyond talking about tools, and this provided a great opportunity. We did a whole series in temporary exhibit on American early American women aviators. So not only featuring the map but we looked through a lot of the names that are featured on that map, And did small bios on each of those people that we could find information for Sloane actually sold his very first painting to Amelia Earhart, so we had a time with something that people already knew about and, and was a very popular topic to discuss with people, and then through this research we actually found that Sloan's wife Barbara herself was a pilot, so we were able to talk about this personal collector connection, and it ended up being a really popular exhibit for us that we're planning on expanding next year again, knowing the collection that we have and putting it to the best use rather than just saying, This is what we have. And this is all that it's really good for. And again, making it more kid friendly. We throughout the collection as we were putting it back together we just starting very simply we created scavenger hunts for kids again very basic, but when the kids have loved for some reason a lot of our tools are marked with skull and crossbones, we don't know why it's just the owners mark of those tools, but there's over 37 of them in the exhibit and when kids come in, you know, talking with them, well maybe these are pirates tools or, you know, this or that and then sending them on a quest to find all of these little skull and crossbones has been insanely popular with, with our younger visitors. We've also been pulling out items from our archive to engage with visitors better, the young man in the photograph in the middle with me was an avid fan of comic books, so I went to our archive and pulled out some of, some comic book material that Eric Sloane had done in the 1940s and it's been so successful, we're going to continue working on that, and next fall actually have a comic, the comics of Eric Sloane exhibit that we're working on. And then, the friends of our museum, have worked tirelessly for many years to recreate a cabin based off of one of Sloan's books called diary of an early American boy. So not only will we now have the gallery exhibits inside. We will also have now have the potential to have hands on a living history experience outside of the gallery, which has been very popular in some of the more hands on traits oriented programs that we've been doing this summer. Unknown Speaker 1:04:56 We also wanted to promote and raise awareness of artisans and crafts people, so we're doing this in a couple of different ways we're having people come and demonstrate on the property itself, which has been really, really successful visitors love seeing these historic crafts and trades being done next to the tools that represent these, and we want to show the diversity and crafts and trade. So not just old white guys that like history and are retired and have a hobby. We're showing young women, young men, you know, non binary people showing that they are interested in crafts and trades, and we've also had a really big pickup in interest after COVID-19 I think a lot of people were looking for something hands on, it's something to do. And we've actually found a lot of younger visitors coming to the museum or reaching out to the museum after seeing Erickson's works, and being inspired to start early trades and crafts. We also were hoping that we're starting conversation of partnering with the historic trades program that is run by Preservation Maryland. And because we're a great fit for this because we're representing early trades in the United States, but we're also tied in with the State Historic Preservation Office which hires historic trades people and is always in need of skilled trades people, which is something that is lacking in the country today, so we're hoping that we can become a center for promoting the idea that it's okay to go to trade schools we need trade people and providing resources for people who would be interested in pursuing that. And we want to make space and this is something that is my sister Museum at old new gate prison has been doing very well. They reopened, about three years ago after a long closure, and they're a early colonial prison and copper mine, but with their mission, they're looking at the idea of incarceration in the past in the United States, and then issues faced by your incarceration today. And one of the things that they did was they had a lot of blank walls in their exhibits and a lot of dead space, and they open this up to the community to be able to talk about the idea of incarceration, or just to provide voice for the community. So on the left. This was done by an artist who was approached the museum, with the idea of creating pieces of art that represented the emotions that men would go through so the idea of fear, the idea of anger, all associated with these, just these human emotions that that I think a lot of times over removed from visiting this prison, which had been based off of early escape attempts very action packed and not really thinking about the people who were were incarcerated there. And then most recently they've actually been become the home of the Hall of change, and Connecticut, which is an organization that seeks to highlight the stories of formerly incarcerated individuals, and talk about how they're positively impacting their communities today. So, this is something that they're working on, and it's just been so inspiring to see them use these spaces in their museums that might not be used for anything else or might be forgotten about. For something meaningful and purposeful, and that's something that kind of pushed me here at the museum at the Erickson museum to do as well. Again, very low cost, these things, we're not spending a lot of money on any of this, and we had a bunch of old lumber laying around the museum, and I had two hallways, leading from our art gallery, into our artists studio that had been covered in burlap, and somehow were missed during the renovations, this burlap had been on the walls, probably since 1990 faded stained and just looked awful, but we had an excess of maple lumber that we were able to reach out to a local sawmill, have them rip down for us, and then just through some elbow grease of our staff have to at the time to in one volunteer. We managed to hang these beautiful gallery walls that will not only serve as extra space for temporary exhibits that didn't exist before, but space for letting members of our community. Come in and have a voice and have a presence in our museum, and that it not just be us making the rules, allowing space for others to communicate and present. And we're hoping this will increase our community engagement, Unknown Speaker 1:09:42 partnerships were huge for us. These are just some of the partnerships that we, we found ourselves involved with in the past year, and I won't go into all of them because I don't want to get too bogged down but we partnered with the National Air and Space Museum The Norman Rockwell Museum. Preservation Maryland any of these groups that could help us get the idea that we're here, while also providing quality programming and value for not only our visitors but theirs. And with that, this was a real learning experience for me because it was really having to remember to be open to collaboration, if someone reaches out to you and not necessarily be like, Oh, I already have too much on my plate. Being open to the idea of working with others and realizing we all don't need to reinvent the wheel, that we're all moving in the same direction. And don't hesitate to be the one to initiate this conversation that's huge for me, because I know people are busy, I don't want to reach out this, you know, I think there's also that idea of of people not being interested and being a little worried about that. But again, remembering that this will all work to our benefit, not only for your site but for the other site, and that we're all working towards the same goals, and overall, it'll be our visitors who will went out. And the idea of the feedback in progress so we this year was kind of our soft opening is what we've been calling it, because I had never seen visitors interact with this museum. It had been years since my predecessor had seen any excuse me since my boss had seen anyone interact with the exhibits, so we wanted to get things back in and see how, how visitors were actually engaging with our museum before we made a ton of plans that we, that may or may not have worked. I referenced it earlier, starting with our poster board or some, some, some post it notes, engaging with our visitors asking them questions and then slowly building up to some more permanent things that that did cost us a little bit of money but still didn't break the bank. And, again, realizing that we will continue to always keep working on these things that they're always a work in progress, nothing is going to be 100% Finished. So now that we have this data that we've collected over the summer, we're able to hit the ground running and really start moving forward for next year. One of the best projects that we did last year, this summer was actually partnering with Hans House Studio out of Boston, and they worked on a project called notre DOM de Perry trust number six. And the idea was that American carpenters would rebuild. One of the roof trusses for Notre DOM cathedral, as a sign of friendship and unity with worldwide crafts people and aid in the reconstruction of Notre DOM Cathedral in Paris. So plans were sent by the, the French architects involved to this, this art collective and they started reaching out to different people about how this project would be done. And strangely enough, the French architects who were really putting this together and some of the French trades people involved were huge Eric Sloane fans. So they called the museum and asked if we would that informed us that this project was going on and wondered if we wanted to have space to come in and be a part of this, and of course I readily agreed. It ended up being a wonderful, wonderful program that took place in DC. Washington DC, over 12 days. For us it was great because it really checked all of our boxes that we are looking to talk about with our interpretation and was really an overall holistic programming opportunity for us. So not only were we able to promote the idea that historic trades and crafts are still around, and are still useful. They are have large impact. We were also able to highlight the diversity in American trades and crafts, and we were able to tie it back into some of Eric Sloan's drawings the bottom on the excuse me the drawing on the bottom is illustrating how a barn frame would be raised. And so I was, of course, took my camera to show how those same methods that would be used, you know, hundreds of years ago are still being used today. The trust was was built using only hand handmade tools and craftsmanship. So it was just a wonderful project to be a part of and it gives us a jumping off point to continue talking about future projects here at the museum. Unknown Speaker 1:14:13 So with that being said, we're off to a good start, or we feel that we're off to a good start. Our 2017 visitation it best guess, was about 2000 visitors between May and November so nothing, you know, nothing huge, so far in 2021 and we've seen 3500 people. Again, with very limited advertising, just letting people know that we're there through social media and offering things like free Saturdays which we've actually found. We're not making money through the gate sales but we're actually making more money than we would have made, simply by people enjoying themselves and donating if they could, which has been great. 2017, there was about 90 US visitors at best guests and 2021 We've already seen over 200 youth visitors throughout the summer which has been great, we've seen. We've seen increased donations, not only just when people are visiting, but after they've visited or hearing with the museum's been open, we've received, Just since last September 10 new original art pieces by Eric Sloane. We recently received a $10,000 endowment to help protect those art pieces, so people are hearing that the museum is reopened, it's moving in the right direction, or hopefully in the right direction. And they're, they're positively responding to that we're also seeing just increased donations in our drop boxes, which has been great. We've seen seen increased shop sales, which has been wonderful in our gift shop. We've expanded our virtual programming, and we have actually just received word this week that we will be moving from a staff of one permanent and one seasonal this year to one permanent and to seasonals next year, so steady progress but we were able to show that we're staying busy enough and that having an extra staff person on site was was needed. Last weekend, our neighboring Museum and Kent had a festival that saw 4000 people come over two days. We saw 1000 of those visitors in our site over two days with a staff of three. So, it kept us pretty busy, and overall it's just been a positive visitor experience everyone who has come in, whether they've been there. 40 years ago. They've had nice things to say they've really enjoyed their time and just talked about how much of a difference experience, the different experiences has been for them, and people that are coming there for the first time, are often say this is such a gem. We love this place. We can't wait to come back. So that's been really nice for us. And of course I had to include this illustration of a locomotive at full steam by Eric Sloane because that's what we try to picture is we're just going to keep moving forward with what we're doing. So, I hope we have enough time to still do this it looks like we do. But, and I wanted to open up the idea to discuss some of some of the questions we ask ourselves, and how you might be able to ask them at your own institutions. So you don't have to answer these all at once. You're more than welcome to think on them if you have an answer you're wanting to share you can email me afterwards, where you can you can reply in the comments if you do reply in the comments just put the the number of the question that you're responding to and we'll work to address those. So the first would be Imagine your space completely empty. What would you bring back in it, and what would you have done differently. We. Number two would be how might you engage your visitors to get feedback at your site, either formally or informally. Three, your director or board wants to install a new blockbuster permanent exhibit. What would you say to convince them otherwise, or to maybe alter that plan to not to not spend a bunch of money all at once and for how does your current mission support this type of interpretive strategy, what might need to change to support it better. So we'll take about a minute or two if you're, you know, if you're willing, we'd love to hear some of your ideas in the in the comment section, I think Kyle is going to help me do that. I work at an antique tool museum so sometimes the, the webinar technology gets the best of me. Unknown Speaker 1:18:45 Yeah, so if you're wanting to discuss in the prompts. Go ahead and type into the chat function, the chat box down at the bottom of your screens. Also just remind you, you're for questions you might have typed those also into the chat, or you can use the handy q&a box right next to the chat. Unknown Speaker 1:19:18 And while people are kind of thinking about those prompts or kind of typing in their, their, what they want to discuss what this prompts, did you want to take some questions or is there a little bit more to go. No, absolutely. Okay. Happy to take any questions. Cool, so we've gotten a good meaning some questions and some comments are coming in. So I'll go ahead and go through the questions first maybe everyone got about 10 minutes left on this session so we can take more questions. Nina asks, Can you talk about the jury process going from that many items to just a few I imagine it was difficult to choose what is most important to show. Unknown Speaker 1:19:57 Yeah, absolutely. That's a great question. So for us we really wanted to look at, first of all what we had to put back as the permanent collection, what were the protected exhibits, and once we got that out of the way we looked at everything else with the space we had, and, and available to us. And I think the perfect example is our Heart Gallery. We have over 40 original works by Eric Sloane, that we really wanted to show people that, you know part of his process is our collection runs from his early career in the 1920s all the way up until the week of his death in 1985. So we thought that that told a great story about his career. At the same time it was filled with hundreds of prints random just computer printouts. So we knew we wanted to remove those pretty quickly, talking with our with our director, and then with, with just looking at the way we wanted the museum to forget progress. We also had a lot of items that had just been randomly donated over the years that had been put in because they were simply Eric Sloane related. We had whole sets of China, and glassware that just featured some of his artwork that were in there with no context, just that they were simply had some Ericksonian artwork. So we're hoping we might be able to use those in the future, but we looked at what we knew we needed to operate with this summer, keeping in mind what we still had and and just, I guess, not to ramble on too much, it was a difficult process but I think it's something that you're able to look at what you need and use what you have. And hopefully that actually answered your question, I'm sorry. Unknown Speaker 1:21:40 So we have another question. Along the same day, from Joey, and he asked you stated that one of the slowest museums issues was space, and that another was, if we have it, it's on display. How did you overcome the space challenge and improve your storage. Unknown Speaker 1:21:58 That's a great question. So, we actually looked at offsite storage which ended up being far too expensive. And what we ended up doing was I ended up actually kind of sacrificing what was considered our office space to be turned instead of it being I found I was never in there. It was a separate room in the middle of the museum kind of tucked away. And I'm always engaging with visitors so I never had time to just go in and sit and have an office, so we decided that it would be better used as an archive. So we were able to use that for increased storage space, and we also got a little creative with our items that could be safely stored inside of the larger studio and you submit without them being in plain sight. So for example we have a large reproduction cabinet that we put to use of storing some of our are more stable items and finding space for them in there so we got creative with the space that we had. Now again, there was the sacrifice of now we don't have an office space and everything has to be done at the front desk, but it ended up serving our purposes, for the time being, we're hoping that we can expand further on, and actually have some storage space that's actually our next big budget item that we're looking for, but maybe in 10 years. Unknown Speaker 1:23:20 We had another question and a comment from Jen says have you heard of North Bennet Street School in Boston. They train students and traditional trades, just curious if you've reached out to them regarding your historic trades programming. Unknown Speaker 1:23:33 Absolutely. So North Bennet Street is actually, I have them on our list of partners and I'm sorry I didn't, I didn't cover them. But they, we actually we're able to connect through the handheld studio notre DOM project, the head of preservation carpentry, Michael Burry himself was inspired by Eric Sloane to get started in historic preservation so we had a great chat, and we're actually looking at working with our students next fall, or excuse me neck next school year, which is, which is going to be fantastic. But it's, they're such a great organization, and we look forward to working with them further. Unknown Speaker 1:24:11 Great. We got one more question a couple more comments and one so far. Answering the prompt. So for those of you that might have questions, now's the time to put those in and either the chat or the q&a box please thank you. Nina, asked did you hear comments from people who visited years ago, and people who visited recently. What were their comments. Unknown Speaker 1:24:35 Yeah, That's another good question we had a lot of people I think that were skeptical when they first came in, and didn't see the walls entirely covered with, with everything if they if they had visited even 10 years ago. But once they went through the museum and they had a more personalized experience, we have one, one of us floating through the main gallery, being able to provide context for people. And then, we are now offering tours of not only the studio but the art gallery as well. So I think for a lot of people the idea that there was actually context with what they were seeing, and they were having conversations or engaging with people, was a very valuable experience. At the same time, people that have come there for the first time, I think are a little blown away by the idea that there is so much in there and that it is more than just tools. When you walk into the main gallery, you see hundreds of early American tools, and you know you're you see you know this random guy in a bow tie talking about early American tools so you're like okay this is this is a tool museum, but then you go into our art galleries and you see these beautiful paintings of clouds and studies of weather all this information about early American aircraft and I think it for a lot of people it's eye opening of how diverse this very small little Connecticut museum can be with the stories that were telling. Unknown Speaker 1:25:59 Great, thank you Andrew. A couple of comments we got Nia, says the book box you mentioned, photographs, sorry that's my dog chiming in saying hello to Andrew. The book box of bluegrass, what amazing find. Unknown Speaker 1:26:12 It was definitely amazing and as we go through, we're finding all kinds of just amazing pieces that that speak to his artistry or his research or just quirky little things that visitors, really enjoy hearing about and really humanize this, this character, who for many years had been treated as kind of this this folk legend in the shrine, so it's been nice to humanize Eric Sloane a little bit. Unknown Speaker 1:26:42 Ronald says while updating exhibits at one of our sites, upper Sandusky, Ohio. We found an original letter from Eric Sloane, in the curators diary responding to requests about identifying part of the buildings and construction, and he says a copy of the ledger is now on view for visitors near the beam connection in question. Unknown Speaker 1:27:02 That's amazing. Um, if you don't mind my, my information will be at the end, and if you have a chance if you could send me a copy of that that would be amazing to see. We're always, I love to hear how other museums, either have slung works in their collection or have you know some sort of tie in to Eric Sloane, all over the country. So that that's incredible. Thank you for sharing that. Unknown Speaker 1:27:28 And we did have one discussion point prompt brought up, Craig, with the number two says, with COVID, we now pre register for all programs and tours can follow up by email with an evaluation upcoming programs and a light, ask for membership or donation. Unknown Speaker 1:27:51 Absolutely. And, and I know, Kyle, you and I have talked about this with museums how that's been a big help of being able to, to really reach out to people in times when they weren't physically coming to the museum. So for us, this was the last year was the first time that the museum had ever done virtual programming had ever had an email list, and I think exactly what you're saying is corrected, it's so nice to have those kind of built in features where we can reach out to people and and get those kind of more formal responses from them, and still engage with them and let them know what we, what we have to offer in the future. Unknown Speaker 1:28:29 Well that is all the q&a, is all the chats that we have injuries or any last things you want to share. Unknown Speaker 1:28:36 I just want to thank everyone for having me again and again I know a lot of this stuff probably seems very basic, when you're looking at a museum but again a lot of this is, is looking, going back to the drawing board and maybe trying to start fresh. And I think for us the idea is that a lot of small changes can have a huge impact. And that's something I try to remember all the time whether we're changing something here, or tweaking something very small over there for the visitors, it's going to be a big change as far as how they're experiencing the museum, and what they're taking away from the museum. But if you have any further questions don't. My contact information is listed here, please don't hesitate to reach out to me, I'd love to chat. And if we can ever be of any help at the Exelon Museum. We're just an email or phone call away so don't ever hesitate. Unknown Speaker 1:29:27 Well, thank you so much, Andrew very much appreciate you taking the time to talk to us. And thank you all for your attendance here, we really appreciate a very large group, having come and listen to this presentation and definitely do get hold Andrew with any follow up questions or any advice that you might be seeking from him, just reminder for those of us who are joining us for the whole conference here that our next session is the keynote, and that's going to be at 1230 so we hope to see you all there. Okay, well thank you again, Andrew, have a good rest of your day and thanks so much for joining us. Unknown Speaker 1:30:04 Thank you so much. Have a great day everyone. Unknown Speaker 1:30:06 Okay. Goodbye everyone. Transcribed by https://otter.ai